How to publish a vacancy

February 2006

You can publish a vacancy (Lineage or Semi-Display Advertisement) in several ways:

Online - via your Client Home account
Email - by sending us a formatted file
HTTP - for details on submitting vacancies in XML using and HTTP POST request see the document XML vacancies over HTTP (document opens in a separate window).
FTP - in the following formats, XML, csv, txt (for large number of vacancies)
Recruitment software - products such as Conkers and iGrasp.

Contact the This is Bristol Jobs Team on 07801 309 629 for more information about publishing a Display Advertisement. To view the Vacancy Template, click here.

To publish a vacancy using any of the methods listed above, you will need an account, a contract with This is Bristol Jobs, and sufficient vacancy quota on the contract. For more information, please call the This is Bristol Jobs Team.

You may also like to refer to our advice on writing vacancies.

Publishing vacancies whilst online

The quickest way to publish vacancies to This is Bristol Jobs is to login to your Client Home page and click on the 'Add Vacancy' button. You will be presented with a short form to complete. Click on the 'submit now' button to publish your vacancy. Your vacancy will be available to candidates within minutes.

Send an email to publish vacancies

To publish vacancies to This is Bristol Jobs using email, you must structure your vacancy information in a format we are able to receive. All vacancies to be sent by email must go to lineage@jobs.thisisbristol.co.uk. If you would like to send us vacancies by email, please check:

How to correctly format your email

To ensure This is Bristol Jobs can publish your vacancy immediately, your email MUST:

contain all of the field labels in the correct order
ensure each field label is immediately followed by a colon
contain the correct field data (about the vacancy) next to the relevant field label
contain the field data starting on the same line as the field label
have all field labels exactly as defined, without changing the case, punctuation, or format as shown in Vacancy Template
contain only one vacancy
be sent in plain text
not include any attachments or messages
have all mandatory fields completed

The job description field may contain some HTML but this is limited to break tags <BR>, ordered lists <OL> and un-ordered lists <LI> .
New lines are accepted in the job description field and the vacancy will appear on the site with the new line displayed.
Bullet points will be displayed as hyphens.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) vacancies to This is Bristol Jobs

If you have a large number of vacancies to publish, you may want to find out about setting up a FTP account allowing you to publish all the vacancies by transferring one file. You will need to be able to produce a file of vacancies in one of the following formats, csv, txt or XML. Please note there are slightly different acceptance rules for a XML file. Please check:

The Vacancy Template
How to set up a FTP account
Transferring vacancies to our FTP server
Ensure your txt or csv file is well formed before sending by FTP
Ensure your XML file is well formed before sending by FTP
View the XML DTD (Data Type Definition)
View XML file example (to be sent by FTP only)
View CSV file example (to be sent by FTP only)
View tab delimited file example(to be sent by FTP only)

How to set up a FTP account

To start sending multiple vacancies in one file, contact your Account Manager with the following information about how you would like the account set up. Decide upon:

1. which file type you would like to send, csv, xml or txt

2. who should receive status confirmation emails - provide their name, email address and work phone number

3. whether you would like to receive a status confirmation email showing whether your vacancy upload was been successful, and if not, why it was rejected. You can choose from the following status confirmation types:

a. notification of successfully processed vacancies or
b. notification of failure to process
More than one person can receive the confirmation and each person can receive both types.

4. the way you want to send us new vacancies and renew currently published vacancies. Choose to:

a. send us all of the vacancies that you would like to see live on This is Bristol Jobs in each transfer file, including all current live vacancies and any new vacancies. We will add the new vacancies and renew any vacancies in your file that were due to expire on the day you send your file. We will ignore vacancies that are already live on This is Bristol Jobs.

Or
b. send us only new vacancies and vacancies to be renewed. We will add the new vacancies and renew vacancies included in the file that are already on This is Bristol Jobs for the number of weeks specified in the vacancy.

5. which Client IDs (accounts) vacancies will be published against. By default this will be all of the authorised users on your contract.

With this information This is Bristol Jobs will be able to create a FTP account for you to access our FTP server. Your account usually takes 2 hours to create.

Transferring vacancies to our FTP server

When we have received the necessary information from you to create a FTP account, we will contact you with your username and password. You need to enter these details once you have connected to ftp.jobs.thisisbristol.co.uk using your FTP software.

This is Bristol Jobs will have created a directory for you on our FTP server allowing you to transfer your vacancy files. You will also be provided with a test directory to test the files you upload. When files are uploaded to the test directory, instead of the vacancies being published on This is Bristol Jobs, we will simply send you a status report so you can see whether there are any errors with the file. The test directory allows you to test your file without:

making your vacancies searchable by candidates on This is Bristol Jobs
charging your account and using any of your vacancy quota.

Once the file has been processed any contacts you have set up to receive notification of test uploads will be sent an email showing the status of the test file. The notification will indicate any errors or warnings.

The only aspect not checked using the test directory is whether you have sufficient vacancy quota on your contract to publish the vacancies.

When you are happy that your file of vacancies is being received successfully, you can then transfer the file to your main directory for publishing.

When you have transferred your file, This is Bristol Jobs will:

check for new files in your ftp account every 20 minutes
check the file extension to your file is correct and matches the information given in the account set up
check the contents are well formed and match the relevant template for the given format
process well formed vacancies in the given file
send you a status report, the type will be as requested when you set the account up and will go to the requested email addresses

Ensure your txt or csv file is well formed before sending by FTP

Whether you decide to send a csv or txt file, you must ensure that the following rules are adhered to in order for the file to be processed without error. Use the relevant delimiters for each file, for example csv will be delimited with the use of commas and txt is delimited with tabs. Note that if the length of any of the fields is longer than expected the data in that field may be truncated in the published vacancy.

A file received by FTP will be processed if the file is formed in the following way:

the file only contains vacancy information (e.g. no header record or any other data)
the field labels are not included in the file, instead each delimiter denotes a new field label
the vacancy data must appear in the same order as the field labels described in Vacancy Template, but remember not to use the field labels in the file
there is at least one vacancy within the file
each vacancy starts on a new line.
there are no blank lines between each vacancy
any text field containing embedded line breaks (for formatting the vacancy) must be enclosed in double quotes
the last field of each vacancy is delimited by either a carriage return plus a line feed, or a new line character.
try not to use double quote characters in your vacancy text, if you do, you must surround the double quotes with another set of double quotes
the first field contains a numeric value being your Client ID.

The job description field may contain some HTML but this is limited to break tags <BR>, ordered lists <OL> and un-ordered lists <LI>.
New lines are accepted in the job description field and the vacancy will appear on the site with the new line displayed.
Bullet points will be displayed as hyphens.

Ensure your XML file is well formed before sending by FTP

An xml file is considered well formed if each file starts with the <?xml version="1.0"
encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>. The encoding character set may vary but the set specified in the encoding declaration must be adhered to.
each file must contain one <jobsite_database> tag and end with the </jobsite_database> tag.
there is at least one vacancy within the file.
each vacancy starts with the <job> tag and end with the </job> tag.
the tag names are as described in the data type definition including both case and order.

The job description field may contain some HTML but this is limited to break tags <BR>, ordered lists <OL> and un-ordered lists <LI>.
New lines are accepted in the job description field and the vacancy will appear on the site with the new line displayed.
Bullet points will be displayed as hyphens.

XML DTD (Data Type Definition)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!ELEMENT gojobsite_database (job+)> <!ELEMENT job (client_id, client_password?, job_reference, job_title, job_description, job_type, job_location+, job_contact_email, job_industry_sector?,job_contact_name, job_duration?, job_start_date?, job_weeks_to_advertise, job_salary_or_rate?, site_code*, job_application_form?, job_psychometric_test?,job_template_ref?,job_direct_app?)> <!ELEMENT client_id (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT client_password (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_reference (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_title (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_description (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_type (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_location (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_contact_email (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_industry_sector (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_contact_name (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_duration (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_start_date (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_weeks_to_advertise (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_salary_or_rate (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT site_code (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_application_form (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_psychometric_test (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_template_ref (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_direct_app (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_footer_type (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT job_footer_text (#PCDATA)>

Advice for writing your vacancy

We advise you to break the job description down into three paragraphs:

Paragraph 1; summarise the details of the position. Use the opening paragraph to grab the attention of the prospective candidate - it should make them want to read on. Keep it short, be as precise as possible, but ensure that there is enough information to gain the interest of the candidate.

Paragraph 2; state the skills and experience required. Remember to include variations of the skills required. Use words that the desired candidate is likely to search on. Where appropriate use:

the singular as well as the plural of key words.
synonyms of key words.

Paragraph 3; state details about the organisation, department or geographical location of the position.

Location searching

All vacancies published on This is Bristol Jobs must contain a location listed in our gazetteer directory. This contains the towns, cities, counties and regions of the UK. If a location is missing, please contact your Account Manager to have it added.

When a candidate searches for job they can choose whether to view vacancies containing an exact match of the searched location or they can request to also view vacancies that fall within a 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 50 mile radius.

The gazetteer directory understands the distances between different locations and will display your vacancy should it match the search criteria.

For example, if the job was in Reading. You could enter the location as 'Reading, United Kingdom'. We will expand the location 'behind-the-scenes' to be Reading, Berkshire, South England, UK, Europe. This would enable any of the following to find the vacancy:

Anybody searching for work in Reading
People looking for work in Berkshire
People searching for work in South England
People searching for work within 15 miles of Fleet
People searching for work within 10 miles of Wokingham.
If you have any problems with publishing vacancies please contact your Account Manager on 07801 309 629.

Vacancy Template

Below is a list of the information we need to receive in order to publish your vacancy successfully. It shows all of the possible field labels in the correct order.

Field label	Mandatory/optional field	Details
client_id	Mandatory	This is your unique account number issued by This is Bristol Jobs.
client_password (not required when sending jobs by FTP)	Mandatory	This is the password used with your Client ID when publishing vacancies.
job_ reference	Mandatory	The reference identifier you give to your vacancy. Note that, in order to ensure that your identifier remains unique we will prefix it with your Client ID followed by a hyphen. The job reference you provide should be no longer than 19 characters. If any of the following characters are found in the reference then they are changed to a minus sign (-): hash (#), forward slash (/), space ( ), plus
job_title	Mandatory	The title of the vacancy to be advertised. This field is searchable by the candidates so you should ensure the job title adequately describes the position. The field must be less than 69 characters long.
job_description	Mandatory	The general description of the vacancy to be advertised. The field must be no more than 2900 characters long, including spaces and line breaks and any hidden characters. This field is searchable by the candidate so you should ensure the job description adequately describes the position and contains keywords that the candidate might use in their search. Whilst a vague description may receive a larger number of responses, a detailed description will produce a higher quality response. The section_end tag can be used at the end of this field, on a new line. What is this for? For advice on writing a vacancy, click here.
job_type	Mandatory	The field value must be 1 single character from - C, P or E. This is used to indicate whether the job is 'Contract/temp' or 'Permanent'or 'Either'. This field can be included in the candidates search so you should ensure the job type accurately describes the position.
job_location	Mandatory	The location(s) of the vacancy to be advertised. Separate locations with commas and ensure the total list of locations does not exceed 199 characters including spaces and commas. This can be a town, city, county or region. Don't be tempted to enter lots of places in order to broaden the appeal, research has shown that this can put the job hunter off applying. Simply state where the job is located. This field is searchable by the candidate, so you should try to be as precise as you can with the location mentioning the nearest town or city. This is Bristol Jobs' search technology will ensure your vacancy gets the right exposure based on a location search, click here to find out how.
job_contact_email	Mandatory	Enter the email address of the person to whom applications are to be sent. Maximum field length is 129 characters.
job_industry_sector	Mandatory	This is a 2-character code and is searchable by the candidate. AC Accounting AD Administration & Office AG Agriculture, Fishery & Forestry AR Arts & Entertainment AU Automotive AV Aviation & Aerospace CH Charity & Non-profit CN Construction & Maintenance CU Customer Services & Call Centre CY Consulting Services DE Defence & Military DO Domestic ED Education, Teaching & Training EL Electronics EM Emergency Services EN Engineering FD Fashion, Design & Tailoring FI Banking & Finance FL Fitness, Leisure & Sport GR Graduates HC Hotel & Catering HR Human Resources IN Insurance & Financial Services IT Information Technology LO Driving, Warehousing & Distribution LW Legal MA Manufacturing & Industry MD Media & New Media ME Management & Executive MK Marketing, Advertising & PR MR Marine & Allied Trades OG Oil & Gas OH Other OT Health, Medical & Social Care PH Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology PR Property PS Public Sector RC Recruitment Services RT Retail & Wholesale SC Scientific & Research SE Secretarial / PA SM Sales ST Skilled Trades SY Security TE Telecommunications TV Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
job_contact_name	Mandatory	The name of the person to contact is displayed with the vacancy. The field value can be up to 60 characters long.
job_duration	Optional	The duration of the employment displayed on the vacancy. It can be entered in any form e.g. 3 weeks, 6 weeks, or Neg. If the vacancy is for a permanent position enter 'Permanent'. The field value can be up to 20 characters long, if a value is not provided then 'tbd' will be displayed on the vacancy.
job_start_date	Optional	The start date of the employment displayed on the vacancy. This can be written either as a date (e.g. 01/05/06), or as text (e.g. ASAP, Immediate,TBA, or TBC). The field value can be up to 50 characters long. This field value is optional. If a value is not provided then 'ASAP' will be displayed on the vacancy.
job_weeks_to_advertise	Mandatory	This refers to the number of weeks that you wish your vacancy to be advertised for. The field value must be a whole number in the range 1 to 52.
job_salary_or_rate	Optional	The salary or rate for the employment as displayed on the vacancy.Note that whilst searching for jobs, candidates have the option to exclude vacancies with no salary specified. So to increase your vacancy exposure you should ensure, where possible, that a salary or rate is given. The field can be up to 25 characters long. If a value is not provided then 'Neg.' will be displayed on the vacancy.
Unused (this blank field should only be used when sending csv or txt files via FTP)		This field must be included in csv files when using FTP to send vacancies. Simply add another delimiter character to create the blank field.
site_code (this field should only be used when sending csv or txt files via FTP)		The site(s) upon which the vacancy is to be advertised. This is optional, if the field is left blank the vacancy will be posted to the primary site/country for the Client ID. If this field is present then it must contain the 2 character site code from the following: (T1) This is Grimsby Jobs (T2) This is Scotland Jobs (TA) This is Aberdeen Jobs (TB) This is Bristol Jobs (TC) This is Cornwall Jobs (TD) This is Derbyshire Jobs (TE) This is Exeter Jobs (TF) This is Devon Jobs (TG) This is Gloucestershire Jobs (TH) This is Hull Jobs (TI) This is the Sentinel Jobs (TJ) This is Leicestershire Jobs (TK) This is Kent & East Sussex Jobs (TL) This is Lincolnshire Jobs (TM) This is Somerset Jobs (TN) This is Nottingham Jobs (TO) Sutton Observer Jobs (TP) This is Plymouth Jobs (TQ) This is South Wales Jobs (TR) This is South Devon Jobs (TS) This is Scunthorpe Jobs (TT) Tamworth Herald Jobs (TU) This is Bath Jobs (TV) Lichfield Mercury Jobs (TW) Western Gazette Jobs (TX) This is Essex Jobs (TY) Walsall Advertiser Jobs (TZ) The Post and Times Jobs
job_application_form	Optional	The number identifying the filtering form you wish to attach to this vacancy (you will find the number in the Filtering Form manager in Client Home). Note that if you have declared a Filtering Form as the default form in your account, leaving this field blank will result in the default form being used. If you have a default form specified you can override this by entering the reference for another form, or 0 (zero) for no form.
Unused (this blank field should only be used when sending csv or txt files via FTP)	Optional	This field must be included in csv files when using FTP to send vacancies. Simply add another delimiter character to create the blank field.
job_template_ref	Optional	This is the number that identifies the Semi-Display template you use to display the vacancy. You only need to include a value if you have more than one template.
job_direct_app	Optional	The URL that the candidate will be re-directed to when making an application to your vacancy. This field can only be used on prior agreement with This is Bristol Jobs.
job_footer_type	Optional	The name identifying the footer you would like to use, either EMP_AGENCY EMP_BUSINESS OTHER NONE Note that if you have declared a vacancy footer as the default in your account, leaving this field blank will result in the default footer being used.
job_footer_text	Optional	The footer text you would like to use in the vacancy you are posting. This will only get published with the vacancy if the account setting allows recruiters to edit footers. If you have already defined footer text in your account online then you only need to enter the name of the footer in the job_footer_type field. The section_end tag can be used at the end of this field, on a new line. What is this for?

Section_end tag

The section_end tag is used when posting vacancies by email. It is used to mark the end of the previous tag. It is only necessary to use the section_end tag where the previous tag is one that allows multiple lines of text (e.g. job_description and job_footer_text) and then only if this is the last tag in the email.